Organization Checklist

You could start writing code without organizing your project—but that lowers your chance of actually finishing a project. Before you charge into the coding phase, make sure you know where you’re going:

Plan an overall architecture for the project.

Be flexible but cautious about changing the architecture.

Decide between a depth-first, breadth-first, or mixed approach to coding.

Choose an XP scheduling approach if you’re working with uncertain requirements.

There’s one more decision to make before writing your code: where you’re going to store the code. In the next chapter, I’ll discuss source code control, and explain why every application should make use of this critical facility.